Monday, September 10, 2007

Get me a left-handed monkeywrench, would you?

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain

This topic has been talked about on a number of blogs in the last couple of days, including here, so I’m not going to go into it in too much detail, other than to say that if the laymen’s paraphrasing by the press is an accurate description of what scientists are actually saying, then I think that the conclusions of this study may be flawed, particularly this statement:

If that’s the case, shouldn’t Democrats be supporting the Global War on Terrorism?Or at least not raising so much fuss about it?There was nothing tolerant in the liberal bashing of General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s (Crocker, heh heh, how appropriate is that name?) anticipated report on the state of the Iraqi troop surge.If this study of neural wiring is correct, I would think that Democrats would welcome the vague ambiguity of the Petraeus status report.If the study is correct, the liberals should be grinning ear to ear and high-fiving the hell out of each other over the announcement that we have no idea how long it will be before we can significantly reduce troop strength in Iraq.Liberals should be overjoyed with the fact that the location of Osama bin Laden remains a mystery, because what would the world be without a little mystery, eh?

Okay, before one of you liberals accuses me of something, I am cherry picking just one sentence out of the report, but at least I’m being specific in my sarcasm.And I just want to say, as a neither a liberal or a conservative myself, I for one am looking forward tothe Patraeus report. I think it will be a highly entertaining bit of fiction.

22 comments:

Hm. I'm thinking this is a highly polished piece of poo, at least in my own case.

I am very conversative in terms of my schedule and having things remain "predictable." I like structure, I do.

However, I am politically liberal. Liberal in the traditional sense, I mean, not in the "left-wing nutbag, right-wing conspiracy" sense.

And I can't wait for Patraeus' report, either. Did you catch the Frontline report on the surge? If not, you can find it here. Very enlightening. I find that the journalists over at Frontline haven't forgotten what it means to be journalist, BTW.

I think the research was on dealing with ambiguity in the decision process. So a decision or position is made or taken but how the information is process to arrive there is what they're studying. So it's not that liberals can tolerate wishy-washy indeterminancy in a decision, it's that we're open to it while making the decision.

And I have to agree with Janiece, Frontline is exceptionally good at what they do. And for the most part (going on Jim's last post) you never even see the reporters during the program (I can only think of two shows that I have seen the actual reporter on Frontline).

I'm finding Crocker's speech painful. I'm a pretty experienced public speaker myself and I detest this kind of vague, read from the cue-card speaking. In my professional opinion, Crocker either doesn't believe what he's saying, or he doesn't know the subject well enough. To be fair, he may just be very nervous, he looks like he's going to break into flop sweat any minute.

Oddly he just thanked Congress for "appropriate civilian force in Iraqi" and funding.

Steve, I predict that Janiece is about to unleash the snark hound. Duck, old buddy, duck now. Senior Chiefs can be very dangerous when stirred to action, but remember they can be distracted by donuts - especially the ones with little sprinkles on top...

Well, at least the lady has standards. That's something, anyway. Strangely enough, now I want a Bismark. Must avoid chocolate for a while though, chocolate can call the Migraine dragon back from the depths, and that's just plain old double plus ungood. This, of course, sucks beyond all descriptions of suckatude, because I am a chocolate freak (meaning a freak for chocolate, not some kind of freakish zombie made from animated chocolate. Just so we're clear.)

Now I know what kind of provisions to send up to the LL Bathroom, mon capitan. Exxxxcellent.

I move that we make a chocolate statue of the Emperor and call it good. Then he can be both kinds of chocolate freaks. (I am too, by the way. If you ever make a chocolate statue of me, make it dark chocolate and send it my way. It would keep me happy for... oh, several weeks at least.)

Condolences, by the way, Jim, on having to temper your chocolate intake.

Anne, I like milk chocolate better than dark chocolate, but I'm not turning down either one.

There's a candy shop in one of the malls in Anchorage that makes hand-made malt balls in both milk and dark chocolate. When I'm there, I usually buy a pound of each. They're expensive, but damn are they worth it. They don't last long either, and if the trip back to Palmer was any longer, none of them would make it home.

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Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lived longer in Alaska than anywhere else and misses it terribly. He recently moved to the fetid Panhandle of Florida and lives now in an ancient Cold War bunker of a house surrounded by alligators and rednecks. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

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